Cigarette Smoke
by Autum
Summary: The boys could complain all they wanted, but it wouldn’t matter to her – smoking cigarettes reminded her that she was breathing.
1. Chapter 1

She held the cigarette to her lips like a shield, a barrier between herself and the world.

In secondary school, the girls had held their trendy slims between two extended fingers, as if they were strung-out models satisfying hunger with nicotine. She had no time for such pageantry. She held her fag like she held her joints, fingers bunched at the filter, breaths long and slow through the side of her mouth.

Each drag was a step nearer to death, each exhale a cloud of smoky clarity. The ember would burn closer and closer to her lips and, paradoxically, as the smoke heated up to burn her lungs, she felt alive.

Her friends disapproved. It was a nasty habit, they warned. Quite irresponsible. She didn't care – they were all going to die anyway, why did it matter? Besides, she liked they way the tobacco killed the jitters and he liked the way it made her hair smell.

He had told her that once, as his hands shielded the flame of the proffered zippo and she leaned in close to light up. Her head had been bent to hide the lighter from the breeze, and as she straightened with her fag lit orange, he had commented that her hair smelled like cigarettes, and that it was nice. It wasn't a compliment, but rather an objective statement of fact. They had stood, quiet as shadows and he white as the moon, and let their exhalations dance up to the sky together, intertwining swirls until she couldn't distinguish which breath belonged to whom.

And then, when she could practically taste the ash of the ember, she had tried to expand her lungs out of her chest to pull in all of the drug she could manage. Though he had finished before she had, he had stuck around to watch her flick the spent end to the cement and release the air in a slow hiss from her lips. He had locked solemn slate-grey eyes with her before grinding his discarded butt into the ground and moving to leave.

As she turned her head away from his departing back to look out over the darkness of the forest, a slight trace of a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. The boys could complain all they wanted, but it wouldn't matter to her – smoking cigarettes reminded her that she was breathing.

**I like this Hermione. That's pretty much it.**


	2. Chapter 2

Her shadow marked a single silhouette against the near black brick of the wall, easily missed if not for the orange ember arching its way to and from her lips. It was a mistake finding her out there, really.

She was invisible without the cigarette in her hand.

If anyone was to say that he started smoking because of her, he'd kill them. That wasn't the reason, of course, that he bought his first pack of something too expensive and sat in his room to practice the inhale, cleaning away the rough edges of the harsh tobacco burn to reveal a smooth, long pull. No, he was interested in the masculinity of it, in its message of general apathy, in the feeling of cement walls rough against his back behind buildings in deserted alleyways. That he would have some pretty company didn't hurt, of course, but she was hardly the reason.

She didn't say a word the first night he joined her to smoke – scarcely looked in his direction, barely acknowledged his presence. But the silence wasn't cold, even though it was the middle of a frigid November. Before he lit up, his breath clouded away from his mouth as a testimony to the season, and the haze of his discarded drags seemed to last forever as they were aided by condensation. Her cigarette was spent far before his was, and she flicked it away, moving inside as it continued to smolder on the pavement.

Sometimes he was the first one outside. Sometimes, she was minutes early or whole hours late. Sometimes she didn't come at all, as far as he could tell. They never spoke, never felt the need to, except once.

She was uncharacteristically without a light, and had to break their silence to ask is she could bum one. The silver rectangle lighter had a dull gleam as he clicked it open to offer a flame. She had ducked her head to pull the fire into her cigarette, into her lungs, and he couldn't help but smell her hair as it went by. There was a soft hint of shampoo, of something artificial, fruity. But the central smell was far more natural, far more preferable.

The one night when speaking seemed somehow acceptable, he told her that her hair smelled of tobacco and that it was nice. He left before she did that night, and didn't look back to see her smile.

**So this wasn't supposed to exist, but I just thought the first part needed a companion piece from a different perspective. Also, I have discovered that I love alliterations. They sound so sexy when read aloud. Perfect for our hero.**


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